Braun Strowman Reveals Pivotal Conversation With Vince McMahon on WWE Chronicle

WWE Network recently released its latest installment in the WWE Chronicle series, focusing on Braun Strowman and his rise from being one of WWE's most promising stars to the reigning WWE Universal Champion heading into this year's SummerSlam. Midway through the show, Strowman recapped a particularly pivotal conversation with Vince McMahon, in which the WWE CEO told "The Monster Among Men" how much he meant to the future of the company. Strowman revealed he was battling thoughts of suicide at the time, and that the conversation with McMahon meant the absolute world to him.

"I kind of just busted in on Vince one day in a meeting and was like, 'I need to talk to you,' and he kicked everybody out of a production meeting and sat down and talked to me, not like boss to employee, but like like man to man, like almost like a father-son talk," Strowman said (h/t Fightful for transcript). "He gave me such a level of confidence and reassurance in myself that day. It lit a completely new fire underneath my ass to be better at this, to continue to work my ass off because I knew it was for a cause. I got to the point where I was feeling like I was doing all this hard work and I was just spinning my tires in the mud and Vince reassured me that that's not what was happening and told me like, 'hey, not only do I want you here for the long haul, I need you here for the long haul.' [He] reassured me I am one of his racehorses and it's proven in this especially in this last year."

"I'm very thankful to have a relationship with him like that because I might not even be here. There was — I don't even like talking about this out loud — I was thinking about killing myself a couple of times and it's just... it's s—ty that I got to that point and I should have talked to somebody sooner, and I never knew how much he cared about me," he added. "I thought I was just, you know, a number in the system, and that day he made me realize that I'm more important than just a number. I can't thank him enough for doing that."

Strowman wound up dropping the Universal title to Bray Wyatt at SummerSlam. He'll face both "The Fiend" and Roman Reigns in a No Holds Barred triple threat match for the title at Sunday's Payback pay-per-view.